Of Shadows and Sons
by Shewritesstuff
Summary: "There was an unexpected hunger behind that stare which had him nervously twisting at his wedding band on many cold, frustratingly lonely nights and once again each time he struggled to lower his guilty gaze during the long, hot sweaty days he spent travelling with this woman." [Richonne]


**A/N: **I can't write smut without sadness, so I settled for this mess. [Rick x Michonne with a side of Carl and a whole lotta pain]

Also my first Richonne fic so let me know if I should keep writing for this pairing or quit for everyone's sake :) Please forgive any typos.

—

_She's not Lori._

It was a simple, factual statement that Rick had to remind himself of way too often. On the surface, there was no obvious reason to confuse this katana wielding one woman army for his homely high school sweetheart.

Yet as Michonne expertly took down a mob of walkers without breaking sweat Rick had to continually remind himself.

She didn't _need_ protecting. He wasn't_ her_ responsibility. _She wasn't Lori._

"Michonne!" Carl sprinted towards her as the last of the dispatched walkers fell to the ground. Rick noticed how Michonne had turned to do the same even before Carl had called out her name. She simply knew where his son was before Rick knew. She knew Carl's exact positioning and she had methodically taken out all threats to the boy without losing sight of him.

Michonne had that warm but rare smile on her face as she finished subtly examining Carl for any injuries. Carl's blue eyes did the same concerned dance, darting across her body but without drawing attention that fact for the sake of not looking worried in front of the person he looked up to the most. Rick did not miss that identical soft smile slowly appearing on his son's face after the confirmation of Michonne's safety. It was the hope of that feeling, of smiling that smile after seeing his son unharmed which kept Rick going after every encounter with the threats of this modern hell.

But right now, it was on Michonne's face. On Carl's face. That look of love.

And for a second Rick no longer felt like a widower.

_She is not the mother of your children_ _Rick_, the exhausted sheriff told himself. The moment passed and he joined the pair with a smile of his own. It was a laboured one aiming to hide the knots he felt in his stomach.

_She's not Lori_, Rick groaned once more later than evening as he felt himself staring at Michonne's toned arms and full lips during their meagre meal of squirrel. There was an unexpected hunger behind that stare which had him nervously twisting at his wedding band on many cold, frustratingly lonely nights and once again each time he struggled to lower his guilty gaze during the long, hot sweaty days he spent travelling with this woman.

She could never be Lori, he sighed, trying his best not to remember how Michonne used to avoid Judith. There was a constant ache in his chest, the guilt and responsibility he felt towards his daughter's short but brutal existence had taught his body to punish him with an excruciating torment. Some days only muscle memory allowed him to continue breathing, eating and fighting.

Muscle memory and Carl.

The way Carl began to suddenly toss and turn in his sleep indicated his son was being dogged by similarly distressing dreams. Rick didn't have to move, Michonne was already there. As always, she was closer than he could ever be.

He felt a different pang of pain in his heart, spurned on by the way Michonne anxiously felt Carl's forehead for a non-existent fever as he slept beside them. The frown on her face eased as the touch encouraged a more soothing slumber. Her hand, which continued to be placed on his head, began gently stroking his dirty dark hair. There was a closeness beyond touch, Michonne's eyes not once leaving Carl's sleeping face. But those eyes were clearly flooded with a guilt and pain that matched Rick's haunted ones.

In the past, Rick had never pressed her to share her story. She had proven herself to be someone he could believe in on countless occasions. Although she never expressly agreed to be a mother to his children or even something other than a friend to him, selfish as Rick was, she was everything to the both of them and more.

Today, that look in Michonne's eyes betrayed to him the answer to questions he would never have asked and it left Rick wanting to die.

"How old?"

Michonne paused her patting, the frown on her face returning for a moment at the sound of Rick's gruff voice. He watched her side profile as she breathed a little harder, a little quicker in hope to ease the tension on her face that betrayed her emotional state. Then without a response Michonne returned to stroking his sleeping son's head, this time with an intense focus.

When she finally did speak she only whispered, in seriousness, how Carl desperately needed a haircut. Rick felt a sudden heat on the back of his neck at remembering the shaver she had brought him.

The prison felt like a lifetime ago. A lifetime in which the hair on his worn out face itched to remember. Life with Lori on the other hand felt like a commercial he saw on TV as a child. Lori's flour covered hair on Sunday mornings was a vague dream. Something used to sell ready made pancake batter to hopeless people instead of something that actually happened to him.

There was no room in this reality for the latter memory and for some reason this didn't bother Rick.

Michonne's face however did. The thought of her losing a Judith of her own made him nauseous with grief.

"How old?" Rick repeated, his voice softer this time but also unintentionally sadder.

"Three. He was three." She spoke but did nothing to turn and face him. Rick was relieved by this small mercy. Seeing her face in full view, heavy and dark, lit by nothing except the small flames of their campfire would just be another memory that'd haunt him in these ghost filled days. Instead, Rick's eyes continued to fix onto half the countenance visible to him and prayed he didn't outwardly appear to be as shaken up as he was.

"He didn't have a father who would die for him." Her eyes never left Carl and Rick's eyes joined her watching his boy. "He was so small. But beautiful. A fast and curious baby boy. Mine." The words were now coming more furiously.

"He loved to run. Play and run._ He_ knew that and still he took his eyes off of him. And now all I can think of is how he probably was running…when it happened. So scared and so, so small. Running from monsters his mommy promised him didn't exist."

She blamed herself the way he blamed himself. Rick knew that anger and the constant ache that fed on it, becoming stronger and more debilitating over time. She had been living with that cancer like guilt since before he had met her, refusing to crumble underneath its weight.

Without warning Michonne turned to face him. There were tears in her dark eyes. Tears she knew she couldn't stop from falling onto Carl's head as he slept and so she abandoned the repetitive motion of stroking his hair that comforted her.

Rick moved from his place beside her in an effort to embrace Michonne but she had already risen from where she sat and walked in the opposite direction. She didn't go far, her legs simply not allowing her to stray too far away from a sleeping Carl. Still, she was putting some distance between Rick and her pain.

Rick cursed himself for his selfishness, wishing he could have worked harder to drive away the thoughts that flooded his mind moments ago when he had finally connected those dreadful dots. Facing Michonne's trauma was like looking into a gaping hole that was threatening their fragile world and all Rick could think to do was throw his body onto it, in hope to cover up its ugliness.

Without any words Rick began his approach, however Michonne's battle ready body wouldn't allow for him to make a move she couldn't control and it was her who had turned into his arms first.

The action caught him off guard.

He was being kissed but it felt nothing like that. Instead it was as if his racing mind was being silenced. Her body hot and heavy was unburdening the only way it could - by having her tongue uncover and taste his pain instead.

This would not be enough to satisfy them.

Rick pushed Michonne back into a neighbouring tree and pressed himself against her even tighter. He rubbed against her body, rhythmically, comforting himself as she had comforted herself whilst lulling Carl back to sleep. Knowing his son was safe and asleep left Rick with no qualms about exorcising his own demons using the hell that had been burning inside of Michonne's body.

Michonne worked quickly to free him from the shackles of his gun holster, followed by the unbuttoning of pants that did little but suffocate his aching lower half keeping it from the feel of Michonne's soft skin. His hands moved at a similar speed unbuttoning the accursed shirt that prevented them from trespassing.

He felt Michonne's breasts bruise under his less than gentle touch as his hands traveled across her chest. And still the heart beneath her rib cage hammered on, crying out for more. Her mouth never stopped kissing his, not even to breathe. It was by force that the chilling, night air crept into their needy lungs and their hearts did nothing to thank it as they pressed further and harder against each other, each wanting to be the first to disappear into the other.

But neither of them could.

Michonne's hands were everywhere except for that one part of his flesh that throbbed louder than any other for her touch. It was the same for Rick, his firing hand was crammed inside of Michonne's jeans, almost drowning in the warm wetness it held yet he couldn't bear to pry her open.

And she never asked him to. Nonetheless she was taking pleasure in his touch the same way he relished in the frustrating way her legs squeezed up and down against his crotch.

When his face drew away from Michonne's, Rick's lips felt bruised and cold. He saw Michonne's eyes flutter open as she made no move resume her moaning into Rick's mouth or wriggle intimately against his fingers. He looked for a clue on her face. She was far from her usual stoic self, her face a mess of emotions but none of them clear in their signal.

Slowly, she slid her hand into his pants and touched him. Rick's breath hitched at the touch and he did all he could not to tremble at the feeling. Her face was about to find its composure when Rick pressed the tips of fingers into her slightly.

Michonne let out a quiet gasp and Rick blinked at the action but did nothing else.

They held their position like soldiers awaiting orders.

"I don't know if I can." Rick finally whispered, it angered him that he allowed that confession to escape his lips but what was worse is that Michonne expected it. He felt himself lose the heat of her touch and with it the hardness he had missed and craved.

"I don't know if I want you to." Michonne replied her voice equally soft with a hint of shame as she clenched her thighs together the moment Rick withdrew his hand from inside of her.

"I'm not her." Michonne continued, she looked vulnerable and exposed, the wind on her half naked chest hardening her nipples. But she didn't move to cover herself.

"I know this." She continued "But I am also afraid to be her."

Their fears were as shared as the heat between their bodies was.

"I killed her." Rick whispered. "I loved her and it killed her." He moved to shamefully button up his pants like he was safely putting a murderer back behind bars.

"You couldn't kill me." Michonne snapped, there was more anger in her voice than either of them had expected. "It is me. I would kill you."

It was said with every bit of conviction and promise she could muster and Rick understood why she was afraid of herself more than she could ever fear him.

"In this world that killed our babies, there are only monsters Rick."

Rick saw her eyes glancing behind them, into the distance, at the sleeping form of his son. As he pulled her closer for a kiss, he became distracted by wetness he felt on her face. Slow and sad their mouths crushed together in an effort to share the heavy load of their fear and guilt.

A kiss is all that either of them wanted to risk at this point.

It was only when the kiss finished and she pulled away to stare at him with curious eyes that he realised the wetness was coming from him. Michonne tentatively touched his tear stained face before her lips planted a light kiss on his eyelids like a seal of approval.

"You'll die for him." She whispered and it was enough to push Rick across the edge. He broke down, knees on the cold, gravelly dirt and shoulders shaking as he sobbed. It wasn't for Lori or Judith this time. He was crying for himself. And for the beautifully broken woman in front of him.

Michonne followed suit, lowering herself to the ground then pulling him into her strong body so as to muffle the sound of their despair.

"We both will." Another promise.

"He isn't small. Or scared." Rick replied. "You can look away sometimes." He felt Michonne nod, her head rubbing against his tear soaked shoulder.

Carl lay warm and safe, asleep by the crackling fire whilst Rick remained in Michonne's arms under the cover of this tree.

It was ugly and messy. They both once again fought for more than just an embrace yet continued to be unable to to do anything other than just cling onto each other on the cold hard ground. This is how their night would pass. A cycle starting with mutual grief, frantic tongues and desperate grinding together of bodies in the hope to rub away the guilt that stained their skin like the blood on Judith's carrier. Tired, raw and gasping for air, forgiving tears would then begin to fall washing their faces clean. This would be followed by kisses to soothe their bruised hearts until the grief seeped in once more and their starved bodies made more useless attempts to consume one another.

It hurt but it was far from being an uncomfortable way to spend the night. This was the new definition of comfort and as it went on they realised that whatever they had before, in their separate lives of breakfast pancakes and soy milk, it would continue to try and cast a shadow on this and any other moment of comfort.

However, there is no room for shadows when there is no light and so together with Michonne under the cover of darkness Rick would fight for comfort and intimacy. Here they stayed for several hours until their tired bodies could muster up the courage to believe that the fire they had lit to illuminate and warm Carl and the stars that spread across the night sky might one day be enough to keep any shadows at bay.

Silent but hand in hand they stepped back into the world resuming their role as the monster slayers that guard over sleeping boys with aching heart and demons of their own.


End file.
